No sign of John Charrington; and of May, his wife, only a huddled heap
of white satin lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the
seat.
"I drove straight here, sir," said the coachman, as the bride's father
lifted her out; "and I'll swear no one got out of the carriage."
We carried her into the house in her bridal dress and drew back her
veil. I saw her face. Shall I ever forget it? White, white and drawn
with agony and horror, bearing such a look of terror as I have never
seen since except in dreams. And her hair, her radiant blonde hair, I
tell you it was white like snow.
As we stood, her father and I, half mad with the horror and mystery of
it, a boy came up the avenue--a telegraph boy. They brought the orange
envelope to me. I tore it open.
"_Mr. Charrington was thrown from the dogcart on his way to the station
at half-past one. Killed on the spot!_"
And he was married to May Forster in our parish church at _half-past
three_, in presence of half the parish.
"_I shall be married, dead or alive!_"
What had passed in that carriage on the homeward drive? No one knows--no
one will ever know. Oh, May! oh, my dear!
Before a week was over they laid her beside her husband in our little
churchyard on the thyme-covered hill--the churchyard where they had kept
their love-trysts.
Thus was accomplished John Charrington's wedding.
_UNCLE ABRAHAM'S ROMANCE._
"No, my dear," my Uncle Abraham answered me, "no--nothing romantic ever
happened to me--unless--but no: that wasn't romantic either----"
I was. To me, I being eighteen, romance was the world. My Uncle Abraham
was old and lame. I followed the gaze of his faded eyes, and my own
rested on a miniature that hung at his elbow-chair's right hand, a
portrait of a woman, whose loveliness even the miniature-painter's art
had been powerless to disguise--a woman with large lustrous eyes and
perfect oval face.
I rose to look at it. I had looked at it a hundred times. Often enough
in my baby days I had asked, "Who's that, uncle?" always receiving the
same answer: "A lady who died long ago, my dear."